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Why Children's Mercy went big in sponsorship with Sporting KC

When Children's Mercy announced the signing of a 10-year deal as the naming-rights sponsor for Sporting Kansas City's facilities, many saw it as an unusual partnership.

On the surface, the sponsorship doesn't seem to have much connection to promoting child health care.

The naming-rights deal is a huge one for Sporting KC and Children's Mercy which will have its brand plastered on all four sides of Sporting KC's stadium — now known as Children's Mercy Park.

The Kansas City-based hospital system also got the naming rights for the state-of-the-art Children's Mercy Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center that it will build as part of the U.S. Soccer's new national training center. Plus, they are the naming-rights sponsor for Sporting KC's championship field and training center at Swope Soccer Village.

"They had a desire to have our presence in their national training center and to create this sports medicine and rehabilitation program that not only serves children playing soccer, but all sports," said Jo Stueve, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Children's Mercy. "We already have a sports medicine program at Blue Valley in south Johnson County. This allows us to tremendously expand that."

Best of all, Sporting KC has a youth soccer program called Sporting KC Academy with 75,000 kids participating throughout the Midwest. That presents a huge opportunity for Children's Mercy to expand its sports medicine program and reach out to more kids and their families to talk about health issues.